Sonic Boom, Episode 2.34: Inn Sanity

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.34: Inn Sanity

Original Air Date: July 1st, 2017

"Sonic Boom" gets a little "Fawlty Towers" in it in the thirty-fourth episode of season two, "Inn Sanity." After another humiliating defeat by Team Sonic, Eggman is left with a dumpster full of robot parts. He complains to the mayor to actually pick up the trash, only to get stuck with an oversized bill for exceeding the normal limit. As a quick way to earn some money, Eggman ends up converting his evil lair into a luxury resort. Despite his frustration with the guests, that goes well enough for Eggman to pay his bill... Only to get stuck with another fee for operating an inn without a permit. When a secret reviewer arrives at the hotel, Eggman has to actually commit to doing a decent job. 

"Sonic Boom" being a sitcom allowed it to do something that stories about these characters rarely get to do: From time to time, Eggman actually gets to be the protagonist. The comics have, occasionally, followed a story from the villain's perspective but always in-service of his role as the bad guy. "Boom" Eggman is also a villain, of course, but the show's irrelevant tone and subversion of classic action/adventure tropes makes him much more of a relatable sad sack than any previous version of the character. Episodes like "Eggman the Auteur," "Hedgehog Day," "Mombot," and this one really put us in Eggman's shoes for a day. Without losing sight of his status as an egotistical jerk, "Inn Sanity" does make Eggman the classic sitcom protagonist here. He's a guy that is beleaguered by trouble but trying to do his best in a world seemingly designed to vex him. It even makes the evildoer something of an underdog. 

The real reason, I think, Eggman is so relatable in "Inn Sanity" is simply because the episode sticks him in a position a lot of us can relate to. Namely, he is now in the customer service industry. If you're reading this, chances are you've worked in retail, food service, guest services, or some other middling, low-paying job that forces you to interact with people all day. That kind of work is already slightly demeaning, simply because you have to clean up after people or concede to their pettiest demands all day for what is surely a meager paycheck. For whatever reason, seeing you have a name-tag and a smock makes a lot people want to treat you as subhuman. It seems that the expectation of being served by someone turns many otherwise decent people into the most entitled, self-centered little monsters. Eggman gets a taste of that all too common experience here, having to deal with a bunch of people demanding he drop everything and please them all day. Here in the real world, we lowly workers have to grit our teeth and bare it because, if we piss someone off, it might mean our job. But Eggman is a cartoon character, one with no expectations of social niceties to begin with, meaning he can be as rude to his obnoxious customers as he wants to be. The result is a surprisingly cathartic episode. Especially the scene where he yells at the Walrus Mom for letting her kids run amok. I've been there, man. 

This puts "Inn Sanity" right into my favorite genre of "Sonic Boom" episodes, when these oversized characters have to put up with down-to-earth, commonplace problems. That Eggman is in this desperate situation entirely because of having to pay an annoying, unexpected bill makes him even more of a put-upon everyman here. All of that probably would've been enough for ten minutes worth of jokes. The comparison I made to "Fawtly Towers" above wasn't just me pointing out a probable influence though. The second half of this episode has a secret hotel reviewer arriving at the inn. Eggman incorrectly identified multiple people as the inspector, lavishing attention on them at the detriment of all his other guests. This is a classic sitcom set-up but also, specifically, the premise of the fourth episode of "Fawtly Towers." This not just confirms the "Sonic Boom" writer room's taste in classic television but it also adds a little more dramatic tension and narrative structure to an episode that probably would've just been a series of gags otherwise. 

And that's good. Even if "Inn Sanity" probably would've been a decently amusing ten minutes if devoted solely to being a series of gags. After hearing about Eggman opening a hotel, Sonic and the others show up, assuming the villain is plotting something underhanded. When it turns out he doesn't, Team Sonic decide to stay as guests. The script certainly plays with the idea that the heroes, Sonic at least, are intentionally fucking with Eggman by being demanding guests. However, the episode mostly goes with the far funnier idea of all of them simply being lunatics. Tails demands more free notebooks, to work on origami. Knuckles wants more towels, to dress himself in homemade luxurious gowns. Sticks keeps stealing everyone's pillows to make a giant pillow fort. Sometimes comedy is people acting weird for no reason and a straight man responding to it. The last episode slotted Eggman into the role of the crazy person but turns out, with his short temper and overall grouchy demeanor, he's a much better choice for the straight man. 

Proving once again that making it in the entertainment industry is based entirely on who you know because Hollywood runs on nepotism, "Inn Sanity" was written by Sam Friedberger. That's the son of Bill Friedberger, "Sonic Boom's" executive producer and co-showrunner. This is actually the fourth episode of "Boom" Sam has worked on, having previously written "No Robots Allowed," "Nut Work," and the aforementioned "Eggman the Auteur." (He also wrote the last issue of the "Sonic Boom" comic.) If we can attribute "Boom's" overall tendency towards self-aware, fourth wall breaking jokes to Bill, then Sam clearly inherited a fondness for that style of comedy from his dad. "Inn Sanity" sees a reappearance of the Doomsday Machine from "Double Doomsday," which Orbot points out Eggman hasn't used "since the beginning of season one." Upon hearing Eggman's scheme, Sonic says "the writers are just phoning it in." When the person Eggman assumes is the secret reviewer appears, he is literally a red heron. 

As always, all writers are writers, at least until we get replaced totally by A.I. And writers love to draw attention to being writers, which is why humor like this can skirt up against annoying and smug if you aren't careful. However, "Inn Sanity" is a funny, wacky enough episode to make up for that. In fact, Friedberger clearly has a good time cooking up increasingly bizarre guests for Eggman to be hassled with, such as an epically clueless Admiral Beaverton or a guy who demands a different room every night. This episode also features two nicely absurd gags about birds, both of which come out of nowhere, and makes good use of Cubot's enthusiastic idiocy. I guess the point I'm making is... Maybe Sam got this job just because he is the boss's son but he's decently funny in his own right. 

Another sign that Sam knows what he's doing is that all the wacky shit Sonic and the heroes do early in the episode end up becoming important in the last act. Ah yes, I do love that satisfying feeling of something minor set-up earlier reappearing by the end. This results in a fun action sequence too, the good guys using props from around the hotel to fight off Eggman's robots. The episode opens with an above-decent action scene too, featuring some dynamic angles as Knuckles and Sticks punch and parry around Badniks. Maybe there was some money in the animation budget left over after "Robots from the Sky" after all. So, yeah, good episode! And that's all I have to say about that. [7/10]